Zombie Archaeology Magazine Wants To Eat Your Brains

Archaeology magazine occupies a unique niche. It's not a mass-marketed oriented magazine like National Geographic or Smithsonian. At the same time, it's not a scholarly journal. It's... in-between. Much like those undead souls who walk the Earth in search of living flesh while craving to messily devour as many human brains as they possibly can. Just in time for Halloween, Archaeology magazine teamed up with Zombie Survival Guide and World War Z author Max Brooks to see what happens when the undead rise out of their century-old graves. Archaeologist Renee Friedman (who in real life is co-director of the Hierakonpolis Expedition) wrote about the discovery of ancient zombie outbreaks at Hierakonpolis: Some have claimed that the famous Palette of Narmer (ca. 3000 B.C.), also from Hierakonpolis, far from recording a victory in the war of unification of Upper and Lower Egypt, is instead a celebration of the successful repulse of a zombie attack. Although we tend to focus on the verso where the king is shown smiting a kneeling enemy, it is the other side that is actually the front. It is the side with the depression for mixing the cosmetics for adorning the cult statue, and so it would seem that the scene of the king marching in procession to view a pile of decapitated bodies is the really important message. After the jump, another real life archaeologist offers his tips for dealing with the undead in the field. According to Tom Flanigan of Wasatch-Cache National Forest in Utah: While the history of the Hierakonpolis outbreak (or outbreaks) is certainly educational, it provides us with enough information to know that the potential exists for another one. Great care must be taken during any tomb excavation and when dealing with human remains. A little mummy dust in an open wound or scratch could have you driving the Devil's Cadillac in the fast lane all the way to Zombie-town. Assuming the virus is unleashed, your first thought might be that you will be dealing with throngs of the ancient Egyptians. This is not the problem. Remember, that Solanum does not reanimate the already dead, it kills living beings and reanimates them into flesh eaters. The threat will therefore come from local population centers, and most likely the Hierakonpolis team itself. There are two ways to stop a zombie. The first is simply to wait out the outbreak for a number of years until the living dead have decomposed to a level that they no longer present a threat. The second is the head shot. You have to disconnect what is left of the brain from the body. Given the tools on hand at Hierakonpolis this will likely be done with trowels (Marshalltown recommended), but shovels have also been shown to be effective. Almost certainly the first sign of infection will come from the Hierakonpolis team. I would surmise that the most likely hosts will be physical anthropologists working in the lab environment due to their continued exposure to human remains and that good old fashioned "mummy dust" we are all familiar with. The unfortunate side effect of the infection starting within this specialized group of researchers is that they are generally the least squeamish about decapitation duty. (Image via Zombie Eat Brains)

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Zombie Archaeology Magazine Wants To Eat Your Brains

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